The Bones
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Frank Bones is a self-destructive, take-no-prisoners, bad boy comic at the bottom rung. Lloyd Melnick is a long-lost acquaintance whose work on the smash hit The Fleishman Show has made him the hottest comedy writer in town. When their worlds collide the consequences involve a crashed Hummer, corrupt police officers, enraged ex-husbands, sultry bartenders, and high-speed chases to Mexico and back. A brilliant satire, The Bones is a stunning debut that reveals, in all its hilarity and ache, the dark heart of comedy. Seth Greenland is an award-winning playwright. He has written extensively for film and television. A longtime New Yorker, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. "Who is Seth Greenland and how did he get into my house and gain access to the most secret and disturbed places of my brain? He cuts so close to the bone he whittles it into a fine powder that gets into the clothes you wear and the air you breathe. The Bones is a tour de force, and I rarely use French phrases."-Larry David, creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm "Greenland shows himself a worthy successor to such past masters of the Hollywood novel as Nathaniel West and Budd Shulberg."-Los Angeles Times "Savagely funny...one of the most perceptive and flat-out hilarious novels about the city's brutal Darwinism, a book that makes you cringe through your laughter-induced tears."-San Francisco Chronicle "A pitch-perfect sendup of Hollywood's endemic self-importance...Greenland keeps his foot firmly on the gas and the book's pace is fast, furious and fun."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Be grateful for what you have. That's the moral of playwright/television writer Greenland's first novel, but what a wildly circuitous, over-the-top route we take to arrive at it. A pitch-perfect sendup of Hollywood's endemic self-importance, the brilliantly acid narrative centers on two characters, a rebellious Lenny Bruce like comedian named Frank Bones (he fondly refers to himself in the third person, hence the title), and Lloyd Melnick, a highly successful TV comedy writer. The two became acquainted in New York when Melnick, then a struggling journalist, wrote a profile of the up-and-coming Bones. Greenland reunites the pair years later after Melnick scores a huge contract writing for a network and Bones comes calling, asking for Melnick's help writing a sitcom based on the comedian's own life (his only other prospect is a role as a sitcom Eskimo). Melnick, who is grappling with his success and desperately struggling to write something meaningful of his own, turns Bones down, a snub that sets off a crazy chain reaction that results in a Hummer parked in the living room of Melnick's posh manse followed by a classic cops-and-robbers run for the border. Greenland keeps his foot firmly on the gas, and the book's pace is fast, furious and fun. The author slows down enough along the way to expound intelligently on topics ranging from self-knowledge to "the anxiety of affluence," but the pace of this raucous thrill ride never slackens. FYI: Film rights have been sold to Sony, with David Mamet set to helm.
